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Why do rainy days feel glum, while sunny days feel cheerful? Writers love to use conditions in the natural world to evoke specific moods in their writing—a literary technique known as pathetic fallacy.
Why do rainy days feel glum, while sunny days feel cheerful? Writers love to use conditions in the natural world to evoke specific moods in their writing—a literary technique known as pathetic fallacy.
Pathetic fallacy - a type of figurative language which makes references to the natural world to evoke specific moods.
Introduction
Introduction
Pathetic fallacy is cheating: as humans, we cannot control the weather or the position of the sun in the sky, any more than we can control earthquakes, volcanoes or cyclones.
However, a writer has total control over everything in their story—including the weather and time of day. By manipulating these natural conditions, writers can evoke specific moods in their readers.
Kate Chopin
Kate Chopin
Let's consider some examples of pathetic fallacy from American author Kate Chopin.
In The Story of an Hour, a widow is shocked to learn of her husband's death. However, when she retreats to her room to be alone, she notices that outside in the garden the new buds of spring are blooming, and she begins to imagine a new life for herself, now that she is free from her marriage.
This realisation, reinforced by the sights and sounds of spring, can be seen in the following lines:
There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully. What was it? She did not know; it was too subtle and elusive to name. But she felt it, creeping out of the sky, reaching toward her through the sounds, the scents, the color that filled the air.
In another of Chopin's stories, The Storm, two former lovers, now married to other people, take shelter as a raging cyclone approaches. When the storm breaks over them, their repressed emotions overwhelm them and they engage in a passionate affair, which abates when the storm passes.
Again, the emotions felt by Chopin's characters are reinforced by her descriptions of the natural world, as seen in the following line:
They did not heed the crashing torrents, and the roar of the elements made her laugh as she lay in his arms.
Chopin's use of pathetic fallacy allows her to evoke specific moods within her audience to reinforce the underlying themes of her texts.
In the case of The Story of an Hour, the sights and sounds of spring support the protagonist's newfound sense of freedom, while in The Storm, the raging power of the cyclone reinforces the passion of the couple's affair.
Using Pathetic Fallacy
Using Pathetic Fallacy
Again, to be clear, pathetic fallacy is cheating, but so is everything in fiction. All that matters is that we tell meaningful stories in interesting ways for our readers.
Editor's Notes
Editor's Notes
While personification and pathetic fallacy both refer to the natural world, they are not quite the same.
Personification refers to the attribution of human characteristics to any element of the natural world to make something more meaningful. For example: the engine roared or the cat danced.
By contrast, pathetic fallacy refers exclusively to a choice by a writer to manipulate conditions of the natural world to evoke specific moods. For example: the sun set on the field of dying soldiers.
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